This relates generally to digital rights management.
In digital rights management, content providers provide content for viewing by individuals in a way that electronically guards the copyright of the content creator. For example, the ability to play the content may be limited so that the content only plays on a certain piece of hardware which is authorized to play the content. This prevents file sharing where the content creator does not get paid for the playing of copies of the file.
Because of the importance of digital rights management to the distribution of content, a large number of digital rights formats have been created. Different equipment and software providers have come up with different digital rights management applications or formats. Among the different applications are those offered by Microsoft, Cisco, Sony, Google, Comcast, Adobe, Nagravision, and MDS, to mention a few examples.
Typically, equipment providers provide hardware and firmware support for digital rights management. For example digital rights management capabilities typically appear in set top boxes associated with cable and satellite content distribution. Thus, each piece of equipment may be adapted to one particular digital rights management application. Alternatively, duplicative hardware and firmware may be used to accommodate two or more different digital rights management applications.